Geek of the Week

A very quick note: Lowell Francis is officially the Geek of the Week. No, really.

Hint: If you go to RPG Geek / GeekDo and post questions on that thread, I'm pretty sure he's legally required to answer them. Several of his players have already joined the RPGG regulars in attempting to whittle his typing fingers down to nubs.

And now ... back to impossible deadlines.

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If things don't work out, you can always go to law school

The best poem I've heard all week.



via Geeks Are Sexy

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Musings On: Haiti Fascination

Notes on Haiti.

Quick and easy donation methods -- because donations are dropping as the story begins to fade from media focus:

• SMS text “YELE” to 501501 to Donate $5 to Yele Haiti’s Earthquake Relief efforts. Yéle Haiti is a non-religious charity founded by musician Wyclef Jean.
  
• SMS text “HAITI” to 501501 to Donate $10 to Yele Haiti’s Earthquake Relief efforts.
  
• SMS text “HAITI” to 90999 to donate $10 to Red Cross relief efforts
  
• Gamers, pay attention: DriveThruRPG is offering over $1,000 worth of PDF product for a $20 donation through their site.
  

Yéle Haiti posted some interesting numbers regarding the current situation today. The numbers are daunting, in so many ways, but they do drive home the fact that this will be a long-term effort.

Haiti has fascinated me since 7th grade, when I first stumbled across a Zora Neale Hurston book lying out on a table at the IUSB library (it was Tell My Horse: Voodoo and Life in Haiti and Jamaica, by the way). Someday, I would love to see the waterfalls at Saut d'Eau, visit the Citadel, and spend a week at a Vodou peristyle, feeling the drums and chants pound through my chest, and marveling at the delicate lines of a vévé drawn in cornmeal or rust.

It's sad that the artistry is almost always overshadowed by stories of corrupt politicians and our modern cultural myths about the depravity of Vodou. I always find myself pausing with envy when I come across sites featuring those amazing flags of the loas. I have a calabash decorated with Erzulie's vévé on my cabinet at work (one of the student organizations was selling trinkets from Haiti a few years ago, and evidently thought either the heart was merely harmless decoration, or chose to believe it represented one of the loa's many Catholic analogs). I also have a candle with Papa Legba's vévé on my shelf of treasures, although I can't remember where I got that. (Funny, about that -- I was actually looking for one dedicated to the Baron or Maman Brigitte, but somehow the gatekeepers and keepers of crossroads are always the ones I find first.)

Why the fascination with the culture inspired by what many see as a "primitive" religion? Haitian Vodou and it's diaspora cousins (Candomblé, Obeah, etc.) are living, breathing religions -- blood and bone and earth and spirit. They are ecstatic spirituality at their core, visceral, immediate and pervasive, and they have absorbed and adapted in ways that should (IMO) make the Big Monotheisms seethe with envy. (Well. I suppose some monotheists are seething, but most definitely not for the right reasons.) I strongly believe faith ought to be a mixture of learned information (from teachers, books, other practitioners, etc.) and personal experience. If I adhered to anything like a traditional religion, it would probably be one of these.

On a related note, I find the sheer arrogance and stupidity of Robertson and his ilk infuriating, to say nothing of the opportunistic scavengers scrambling to ship Bibles down to Haiti for all the poor souls "hungering for the Word of God," or putting together aid to be exchanged for conversions of convenience. I'm sure they think they're bringing comfort to those who need it, when they're only adding insult to injury -- literally, in this case. And yes, this is a particularly sore spot with me. My father's church made great use of convenient conversion tactics -- they were exceedingly proud that their "Feed the Hungry" program only fed Christian children.

So. Vodou gets a lot of flack and disrespect from the missionary contingent, but the reality is that it's a religion of hope, community, and honoring the spirits and those who have gone before. Contrary to popular belief, Vodouisants do, in most cases, believe in a single creator god; it's just that the loa are a few levels closer to us. They're the ones who actually Pay Attention to the little people down here on Earth; they're the ones dealing with the day-to-day work. Which is why their mapping of loa to Catholic saints seems to be pretty spot-on to this non-Catholic girl, IMO.

In any case. I continue to watch the coverage because I can't look away. It's heart-wrenching and sad, and yet ... there's a chance, here, for Haiti to remake itself. I sincerely hope they can do so, with the world's help, and still dance to the beat of their own drummers.

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Chillin' at home

Recuperating after a wicked exhausting week. It's been a long, long time coming, but I think things are finally starting to look up at work. There are a lot of interesting projects in the works -- about half of the projects on my grand to-do list are my idea, and half are from the new deans who've asked for my help on one thing or another. All of them will involve some form of geekery, so I'm looking forward to digging in.

Also handed off a 19-page doc to my boss this week that included a project log, to-do list, arguments on why my job needs to be restructured, and the four other positions I'm applying for. After taking a few days to digest the info, she came back with an encouraging response, so I'm working on draft two this weekend.

Speaking of work, I'm also working with The Monica on layout and design for a Violet War story project, and was approached by another program on campus to do some freelance work on their behalf. I have a couple of weeks at most to put together a workshop, modified style template, and procedural guidelines. And then we're going to tackle how they archive these projects, because they will contain patent-application materials that will need to be restricted to secured access. (I'm hoping to spread that luck around a bit, as well, since they also need writing help for their students, and I happen to know a freelance writer and editor with graduate/academic experience...)

It's almost like 2010 is apologizing for 2009. I ... accept. I think we're off to a good start, here.

In other news, a good friend shared a fun vid of a Glee-based flashmob in Rome over the holidays:



The fascinating part for me in the vid is how the flashmob grows, the longer it goes on, as if people who weren't in on the plan start to join in around the edges.

I don't think I've mentioned this previously, but I came across an excellent myth- and folklore-related blog late last year by author Kate Winter. Titled Girls Underground, it's Kate's attempt to explore the Persephone/Armless Maiden story archetypes in popular culture. I've been drawn to these stories since I was a kid, so I'm excited by the prospect of a writer paying close attention to those heroines.

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So tired...

It's been an exhausting week, and today was the worst of it. The snow-madness outside isn't helping much. I was ready to crawl into bed when I got home from work. However! The Monica has asked me to help out with a story she's going to be posting for sale soon.

Hurray for layout projects! They are my favorite. To me, text formatting is like ... a crossword puzzle, of sorts. Relaxing, finicky, tricksy and a good excuse to exercise the channel all the typesetting-perfectionist tendencies I try not to unleash on dissertation students. (I'm not sure they'd believe me if I told them that, though...)

The Monica has also asked me to assist with graphics and cobbling together a cover. This sounds fun, but is Very Hard Work when you're falling asleep and thinking half-awake thoughts about yetis and cookies (not necessarily in that order) as you peruse stock imagery sites. Hm. Perhaps I should put the perusal off until the weekend...

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Good Riddance, 2009

The Long, Drawn-Out Demise of 2009 (or, it's about freaking time)

I, for one, am not sorry to see it go. Here's hoping 2010 decides it's quite content offering good fortune, health and gleeful amusement. We could all use a bit of that. At the very least, I'm hoping 2010 grows up to be a pleasant sort rather than the snarky, greedy, underhanded bitch 2009 turned out to be.

As an example. Mom and I went to the Grape Rd. Barnaby's on a whim the other day. Now, we both love Barnaby's downtown. But this ...  I can safely say it was the worst pizza I've ever had. Ever. It was teeming with soul-crushing disappointment masquerading as greasy pizza and rancid onions. We made off with handfuls of their peppermint candy canes just to rid ourselves of the taste. That right there, that's pure 2009 in action.

And that is all I have to say about that.

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Media Musings

Music

Amazon is having a $5 MP3 album sale, so I snagged a few I've been meaning to pick up and hadn't gotten around to -- Lacuna Coil's Shallow Life, Otep's Smash the Control Machine and Bat for Lashes' Fur and Gold.

(Aside: Will informs me he heard Otep on local radio on the way back from picking up his car. Huh. It's about time they got airplay around here.)

It was interesting to note the presence of the Fever Ray album on both John Allison's and Jason Pitzl-Waters's top album lists for 2009, but I'm still trying to figure out why. (Follow the link to John Allison's blog for samples.) I like the idea in my head, but my heart barely gives it a shrug before heading off blithely to be crushed by the disappointment that is the newest Faith and the Muse CD. Honestly, Fever Ray's music is fine, I suppose, but Karin sounds like a less squeaky Bjork, to me. Then again, I'm not exactly a connoisseur of indie music. I still haven't made it all the way through The Hazards of Love while conscious, as much as it pains me to admit it. Colin's voice grates on me and induces a serious zone-out effect after a while.


Movies

Moving on. We watched Ink (trailer: here) the other day -- it's an indie film, an amazing little modern story about a little girl and her father, and their entanglement with the bringers of dreams (Storytellers) and the bringers of nightmares (Incubi). I loved it; it manages to combine fast-paced action with surreal artistic sequences to great effect, despite the indie production, and the sound direction was spot-on, IMO. Unfortunately, because we watched it on Hulu, the movie was broken up periodically by a commercial, so that threw the pacing in some places.

Highlights:

1. Loved the environmental stasis effect in the first confrontation sequence
   
2. Jacob the Pathfinder manages to steal the show in several spots; he's definitely the character I found most intriguing despite my initial reaction to him
   
3. It has a sequence that is possible the best on-screen example of fate magic, ever
   
4. I found the incubi suitably creepy, and found myself wishing the leader of the Assembly had gotten more screen time
   

Lowlights:

1. Suffers a tiny bit from shaky camera syndrome in spots and some of the combat scenes are a bit hard to make out
   
2. The world mythology is rich enough that I actually would have preferred more of that and less of the main character
   
3. The little girl's dad is a jerk ... but I can understand why, at least
   

I was less pleased with the ending than the rest of the movie, but will refrain from commenting for fear of spoilage. (The ending certainly didn't ruin the rest of the movie for me.) If anyone else has seen it, I'd be interested in hearing their thoughts.

Also finally saw UP, thanks to Edige and Auzumel. For anyone who hasn't seen it, I recommend the UPular Remix by DJ Pogo. Though I confess I can't make out a lot of the "lyrics," it's the remixing of the vocal track bits into musical notes that makes UPular interesting.

I'd still like to see Sherlock Holmes, and probably Avatar, at some point. (I just can't get excited about Avatar for some reason...) Also, the 2008 Swedish vampire flick, Let the Right One In. They are on the Things to Do list. Mom informs me that It's Complicated is hi-larious, as well, and she insists that I must watch it. We shall see.

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